Playoff run redefining Bill Bidwill's legacy

The last time the Cardinals hosted a championship football game, Bill Bidwill was a teenage water boy, roaming the sidelines while his father's team won the 1947 title.

Since that frigid late-December afternoon in Chicago, then the team's home, the family business under the now-77-year-old Cardinals patriarch mostly has been associated with one word: futility.

But the legacy of Bidwill, a quirky, quiet, private man who friends say is greatly misunderstood, could be changing.

If his Cardinals win a Super Bowl berth Sunday at University of Phoenix Stadium, one of professional sports' most downtrodden franchises will finally have transformed itself into a winner.

With that it would be so easy - justified, perhaps - for Bidwill to say, "I told you so," because for years he claimed that the Cardinals would be competitive if they had an upscale new stadium that would generate the kind of big money other NFL teams enjoy.

Even though his words have come true just three seasons after a state-of-the-art stadium opened in Glendale, Bidwill does not crow about it.

"Well, I didn't complain when we got a lot of criticism, and I'm not going to complain when we are getting a lot of nice things said about us now," Bidwill said matter-of-factly.

Respect of his peers

Although the unprecedented playoff run has Bidwill's Cardinals on the cover of Sports Illustrated and finally gaining respect, an influential NFL owner said Bidwill long has been admired by his peers.

Part of the respect comes from belonging to a small fraternity of other longtime NFL families that include the Rooneys in Pittsburgh, the Maras in New York and the Halas-McCaskeys in Chicago.

Dan Rooney, Pittsburgh Steelers chairman, said it was Bidwill who closed the deal with fellow owners who voted to give the Valley the 1996 and 2008 Super Bowls and the huge economic windfalls that go with those events.

"He was the most influential," said Rooney, who has known Bidwill for 50 years. "He was emotional about it. . . . He swayed the votes and got them."

Rooney also said he thought so much of Bidwill that he agreed to his request for the Steelers, coming off a Super Bowl XL victory, to play the first preseason game when University of Phoenix Stadium opened in 2006.

"Usually, for preseason games, we stay around here," Rooney said. "But for Bill, we were happy to go out there." Bidwill also has made an impression at the St. Peter Indian Mission in Bapchule, about 20 miles south of Chandler.

Sister Martha Mary Carpenter said Bidwill stopped by the school shortly after the Cardinals came to Arizona, and he offered to be of help.

She took him at his word and hit up Bidwill in the early '90s, when a storm wrecked the school's roof. The Cardinals owner gave $20,000 for repairs. Over the years, he has supplied the school with game tickets and paid for a dozen students to attend private Catholic high schools.

"He is so quiet about his generosity and his goodness," Carpenter said. "He is a secure person who knows what he is about."

Avoiding the spotlight

Although many sports owners would be happy to take credit for landing a major sporting event or making charitable contributions, Bidwill long has avoided the spotlight.

He says it's by design.

In a boisterous locker room at the team's Tempe training headquarters, Bidwill, in almost a whisper, said fans are more interested in hearing from players and coaches, not executives.

Yet, for years, fans called local talk-radio shows to speak with Jerry Colangelo, the gregarious former Suns and Diamondbacks owner.

Colangelo, who met Bidwill shortly after the team moved from St. Louis in 1988, said most people really don't know Bidwill, who Colangelo said is "very much misunderstood."

Colangelo said Bidwill was promised a new stadium when he moved the team to the Valley, where the Cardinals played 18 seasons at Sun Devil Stadium and fans baked under the desert heat.

"He has been a patient man in terms of coming here under certain or what he thought were certain guarantees, which didn't prove out," Colangelo said. "He went through many difficult years of waiting, and it took a long time to get his franchise where he wanted to get it and end up with a new facility, which goes a long way to helping you be competitive."

The air-conditioned University of Phoenix Stadium, built with voter approval in 2000 after previous failed attempts, gave the team at least $45 million in additional revenue in 2007 compared with the final year (2005) in Sun Devil Stadium, according to Forbes, which publishes yearly financial estimates on pro teams.

Bidwill said the stadium, which will be sold out for the 32nd consecutive time Sunday, has provided the Cardinals a "good situation." In 18 years at Sun Devil Stadium, the team sold out the facility 12 times. Michael Bidwill, the owner's son and team president, said his dad's persistence to get a new stadium helped change the franchise's direction.

"He believed we needed to keep working our plan and get our stadium and, as we got it, things would turn around," the younger Bidwill said. "The stadium has been such a big part of the success."

His life's work

Until this season, success on the field has been spotty for Bidwill, who has been associated with the Cardinals his entire life.

A year after the Chicago native was born in 1931, Bidwill's father, Charles, bought the franchise for $50,000. Today, Forbes estimates the team is worth $914 million.

Charles Bidwill's teams had mixed results, but they won the championship in 1947, the year he died, and the team under Bidwill's mother, Violet, lost the championship the following year. Coincidentally, both games were against the Philadelphia Eagles.

Bidwill became a team vice president while an undergraduate at Georgetown University. He also served in the Navy. When the team moved to St. Louis in 1960, he returned to work full time with the franchise. A dozen years later, he bought out his brother, Charles Jr., to take control of the franchise. Bill's early years of ownership were pretty good.

In 1974 and '75, the Cardinals lost in the playoffs. They also made the playoffs in the 1982 strike-shortened year.

But Bidwill's overall tenure included plenty of dark years, and since 1972, when he assumed full control, the team's regular-season record is 229-339-4, a 40 percent winning mark that includes 17 losing seasons in Arizona. His teams have three playoff wins, two coming this season.

Those close to him hope he will be viewed differently if the Cardinals continue to win.

"We live in an environment where the buck stops with the last person, and in this case, he has taken a lot of criticism," said Rod Graves, the team's general manager. "People tend to appreciate a winner, and as long as we are putting a good product on the field, he deserves the credit."

Rooney, the Steelers owner, agreed.

"Everyone will say he worked hard to get a new coach, good players and doing what it takes to have a winner," Rooney said.

"I think he will be looked upon as someone that people can say, 'Hey, we have a good man here.' "

Bill Bidwill

Title: Owner, Arizona Cardinals.

Age: 77.

Personal: Married to Nancy. They have five children and nine grandchildren.